"If Davey's picking the club, he's on the club, you know that {laughter}...Bryce is an extremely talented player. He performed terrifically in the Arizona Fall League and in his first professional season really handled each level flawlessly. Played very very well in the Arizona Fall League which is as you know is an accelerated league. He shows all the signs of a guy that's a quick to the big-league guy. We all know about the power, we know about the hit tool, the hit ability. The kid can run, he can throw really well. He's learning how to play defense in the outfield, since after we drafted him we took him from behind the plate to the outfield to extend his career a little bit.

Those are difficult questions. What Davey has beat into my head is I'm gonna keep an open mind about him. We really want to break camp with the best 25 players that gives us a chance to win. But we can't do that in lieu of not developing Bryce Harper correctly for the long term...we always have that in the back of our mind. We don't want retard the progress of a great player. But we also don't want to accelerate the process where he really takes a step backwards in his developmental curve. It's a fine line, but as we stand today we're going to keep an open mind, and if he's deemed ready, prepared to handle rigors of a major league season we'll give him every opportunity. But if we feel that he still needs a little more seasoning then he will go to the minor leagues. We say that and I see him as a guy who doesn't need a whole lot of minor league seasoning left, but it can't hurt a player to go get some at bats at a lower level than the Major Leagues." (Mike Rizzo, via MLB Network Radio, 2/3/2012)